The present invention relates to a part cutting machine.
Elongated parts made of material such as wood or the like are cut on machines presenting a base of roughly the same size but no smaller than the parts to be cut; a straight guide extending in a given direction and fitted integrally to one edge of the base; a carriage movable along the guide; and a cutting assembly fitted to the carriage and for cutting the part parallel to said direction.
The cutting assembly normally features a rotary tool, such as a circular saw or the like, which cuts the parts in a vertical plane parallel to said given direction. The tool is operated by a drive, which, to reduce the overall width, is fitted to the carriage to the side of the tool, and comprises an electric motor and a parallel-axis speed reducer, in particular a belt reducer. Though mainly adopted for reasons of troublefree assembly and maintenance, this type of reducer presents several drawbacks when cutting very thick parts, or, to save time, when cutting a number of thin parts of the same shape and placed one on top of the other to define a pack of considerable thickness. In both of which cases, the tool requires a particularly high cutting torque, which means using very wide belts and, hence, greatly increasing the distance between the cutting plane and the edge of the base to which the carriage guide is fitted. As such, the cutting region of the machine is a considerable distance from the edge of the base, so that the material is substantially cut in a projecting manner, which obviously results in vibration of both the machine and the material being cut, in a rapid fall-off in performance of the machine, and in poor quality of the cut parts.